John Denver Trending

A Reaction Paper

In this age, it is undeniable that social media is very powerful. Fake news and hate are
always being spread in different platforms such as Instagram, twitter, YouTube and especially
Facebook. Just only one click and many things could go wrong. This kind of problem is shown in
the movie, John Denver Trending.
In the movie, Carlos posted a video of John Denver hitting someone and implying that he
also stole the kid’s iPad. It wasn’t shown in the posted video that kid was the one who started fight
by accusing John Denver of stealing his iPad. He took the latter’s bag and that’s why he fought
back. But, the netizens didn’t know the back story and all they saw was John Denver kicking the
kid and they all believed it. They believed that John Denver stole the iPad and that he bullied that
kid. The netizens ate all what Carlos said in hi Facebook account commenting horrible things about
John Denver and even turned him into a meme, making him the laughing stock of Facebook.
Throughout the movie, I felt angry. I felt myself angry for the injustice of John Denver and
her mother. I felt angry because what’s happening in the movie is the exact same thing that is
happening in real life to lot of cyberbullying victims. This is why Facebook is very toxic. Only
one wrong information and already, fake news will spread. One wrong opinion and many netizens
will believe it. Facebook users don’t know how to filter what they see on social media. They don’t
research properly to understand what really happened. Instead, they easily believe in things and at
the same time, they are very hostile to one another. What I don’t understand is how people can
easily throw bad words and comment bad things about someone they didn’t even know personally.
This kind of thing is called cyberbullying. Is real and it is being experienced by a lot of people.
The ending of the movie really disturbed me. What John Denver experienced is so horrible
that he thought he had no choice but to kill himself and end his and his mother’s suffering. This is
the purpose of art, to disturb the comfortable and that is what the movie did to the viewers.